" Brutal Facts''

As it must to all wives, a measure of disillusionment came, last week, to Mrs. Stanley Baldwin, wife of the British Prime Minister. Her husband's rise to head the State may well have seemed to her, pious, devoted, the visible workings of the Higher Power. Tenderhearted, she learned, last week, that some 62 miners had been entombed during the night at Cwm/- Wales, by a mine explosion. Soon Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Baldwin were speeding to Cwm by motor. If the State could further the entrapped miners' rescue in any way, the presence of Premier Baldwin guaranteed every effort. As the Premier's limousine entered Cwm, a score of Salvation Army workers were grouped about the fatal pithead singing, "O God, Our Help In Ages Past.

" The local Government inspector, J. M. Carey, approached, hat in hand, spoke in low voice to the Premier. The mine was full of poisonous gasses. Rescue work, even in gas masks, was too dangerous. The inspector had ordered that no one should go down in the mine until the fumes of explosion should be pumped away by the electric ventilators. Any other course was madness, said Inspector Carey, but the wives and families of the entrapped men were getting restless. He could not conscientiously advise the Premier to remain with his wife in that vicinity. . . .

Conscious of their good intentions the Baldwins stayed, went among the stricken families. To one Mr. Button, two of whose miner sons were killed by the explosion, Premier Baldwin said: "I have come to see you as man to man--not as Prime Minister. I feel very sorry for you in your great loss." Meantime Mrs. Baldwin held Mrs. Button's hand, urged Mrs. Button from the fervor of her own faith to seek consolation in prayer. . . .

As the Baldwins returned to their limousine a group of miners and their wives collected in half-hearted fashion. A woman, the wife of a miner still trapped in the mine, pointed to the Baldwins and suddenly shrieked: "Murderers! Murderers!! You won't let them rescue my Tom . . . you--you rich beasts!"

Affrighted, Mrs. Baldwin clung to the Premier's arm. Imperturable, he looked at the crowd with level eyes, silently sucked at and puffed his famed pipe.

"Traitor! What about the eight hours law?" cried a burly miner. All knew that Premier Baldwin had sponsored and seen through the Commons a bill extending the one-time seven-hour miners' day to eight hours (TIME, July 12).

"What about our men dying now in the mine? Why don't you put on a gas mask and go down the pit, Baldwin? Coward! Traitor! Rush him! Down him and his psalm-singing wife!"

Mrs. Baldwin screamed. Was her conviction shattered then, perhaps --her belief in Mr. Baldwin as an agent of the Higher Power? She paled. Then Mr. Baldwin took his pipe out of his mouth, nodded to his chauffeur. The starter buzzed, the engine roared. At a blast from the limousine's powerful siren horn the crowd wavered. "Come on! Down them!!" shouted some voices; but the limousine broke through as one young miner shouted "Back to your hogs, Baldwin!* You're lucky to get away!"

Returned home, No. 10 Downing Street, London, Mrs. Baldwin was overheard by a newsgatherer to say to her daughter Betty, as she entered the door: "It was terrible! Terrible! But your father said to me at the time: 'Don't worry, we must expect little rubs like this once in a while.'"

At Cwm, Sir Frederick Mills, Chairman of the Ebbw Vale Steel, Iron & Coal Co. Ltd., issued a final dire statement: "Nineteen bodies have been recovered. The gas has been pumped out and rescue work is going on; but I can see no hope that the 32 men still trapped underground remain alive."

In the House of Commons fiery Laborite J. J. Jones cried: "The miners at Cwm received Baldwin in the proper spirit!"

"Order! Order!" cried Conservatives.

"I say, and I will repeat," shouted Mr. Jones, "that all the crocodile tears shed over this disaster by the Government are sheer hypocrisy. . . . The visit of the Prime Minister with a tearful sop to men on whom the Government has imposed the eight-hour day was sheer effrontery!"

Soon Ben Tillett, a more moderate M. P., spoke for the Labor party: "We deeply regret the demonstration against the Prime Minister at Cwm. . . . Nothing but the stark tragedy of death could have brought forward in Mr. Baldwin's presence the brutal facts of class war. . . . However much this outburst of personal resentment must be deplored, the miners righteously resent the callowness and oppression they have suffered and are suffering."

/-tPronunciation: "Koom."

*On his Worcestershire estate the Premier has developed a special breed of hog in which he takes pride.